READY TO ROCK
OZZFEST…
IRON MAIDEN
WILL PULL OUT ALL THEIR EARLY, LANDMARK HITS!
By David Lee Wilson
 After
years of being the home to every “Yo dog” band on the planet from Linkin
Park to Limp Bizkit, the Ozzfest has spent the last few seasons
rehabilitating its legend.
With this year’s
addition of Iron Maiden, real rivethead satisfaction is virtually
guaranteed.
The six-piece Maiden
monster and a 12-foot tall version of Eddie, will romp the main stage of
North America’s Ozzfest with all the bad intent the group showed
on their historic “World Piece” tour of ’83.
It will all be done
now, as it was then, with only the first four Maiden albums providing
the music for the night’s set. And just think, following that, you get
the original Black Sabbath as a sonic chaser!
Iron Maiden frontman
Bruce Dickinson is looking forward to the tour with some relish, but it
is not the only thing close to his heart at present.
 Dickinson’s
new solo album, Tyranny of Souls, recently hit retail
racks. The disc reunited him with long time producer/guitarist Roy Z
and the tracks move effortlessly from pondering to pounding and truly
are some of the best that Dickinson has recorded to date.
With an historic
tour, a new solo album and a modicum of spare time, the only logical
thing for Dickinson to do was to ring us up and tell all about it.
MIDWEST BEAT : Obviously you are busy with Maiden, but did it really need to
be seven years between solo albums?
BRUCE DICKINSON : Yeah, but I was also a bit of a scardy-cat. I took
several opportunities to say – ‘There’s not enough time.’ or ‘It’s not
the right time,’ or ‘Roy, I’m just too busy.’ For two or three years at
least, I just thought – ‘The bucket here is empty in terms of the ideas
of how to follow up Chemical Wedding.’
M.B. : Is this a bit of therapy for you, to be able to go
in and do exactly what you want, rather than to create a record from
compromise with the other five guys in Iron Maiden?
B.D. : I didn’t want this album to be just another follow-up. I wanted
it to be an album that had its own life. It took a while and I’m glad it
did, because it’s the right album now.
M.B. : This disc fits quite nicely with your last two solo
discs. Have you found a comfortable groove with Roy?
B.D. : We pretty much got our own groove. A little bit of it was related
to Chemical Wedding, but a lot of it was just having the
confidence to lay back a little sometimes. On the track, “Devil on a
Hog”, we have a whimsical moment there. You know like a really cool riff
but just keeping our tongue in our cheek a little bit.
M.B. : Was it hard getting Roy in on this? I mean, he
seems to be much in demand these days?
B.D. : Yeah, I was really lucky. We both found a great window of
opportunity so we just grabbed it.
M.B. : Before you started this had you heard what he did
on the Priest record?
B.D. : No, but I was sure it was going to be good. It was just a question
of how much they’d let him do, and how much they insisted upon
controlling everything ‘cause I know what they like! (laughs) You know,
I actually think he did a great job with the record and I think that had
he been allowed to do more, it would have been an even greater record.
But hey, that’s just me and I can say that, he can’t.
M.B. : You are out for a while with Iron Maiden doing
festivals like the Ozzfest in America, after that will the solo band
re-assemble for a tour?
B.D. : There are no plans at the moment, but I guess it rather depends on
what the reaction is to the new record. If all of a sudden we’re
getting album sales, then it would be really fun to consider.
M.B. : Do you have a completely different daily routine
when you’re at home as opposed to while on tour?
B.D. : I’ve tried to make keeping myself in shape an ongoing thing,
because it just keeps getting harder and harder as you get older.
You know, the old
metabolic rates, they slow down! (laughs) And you just think, ‘Oh, no, I
am going to cut this out...’ But I just try to keep myself as active as
possible. I try not to use the car, I cycle everywhere, I walk
everywhere, that kind of stuff. That creates a surprisingly large
amount of exercise. If you walk everywhere for two hours a day, you
don’t need to go to the gym for that 50 minute workout.
M.B. : You give an energetic performance on stage, so that
must count for something as well?
B.D. : Yeah, you do, but not as much as you think. You sweat a lot, which
makes you imagine you’re working hard, but all you are really doing is
sweating. I mean I try to run around a lot, but on the other hand, by
the time you’ve knocked out five cold ones at the end of the show, you
put it all back on again!
M.B. : Well, at least you made room for the pints!
B.D. : Absolutely.
M.B. : Where do you derive your greatest enjoyment these
days, touring the big halls with Maiden or working on the solo band
where it would seem to be more about the laughs and beer money?
B.D. : I kind of look at Maiden like that a lot now. I mean, I actually
look at Maiden now as I’ve finally gotten around to thinking of what I
do as being an amateur occupation again. It took me a long time, but I
finally got over being a professional musician. I have backed off of
that, you know, grown out of being a professional musician. I’m back to
being an amateur, in my mind.
M.B. : That’s probably a healthier way to think about it.
B.D. : Oh, it’s a much healthier way to think about it.
M.B. : How do you feel about this Maiden tour and the
decision to only play songs only from the first four records?
B.D. : Well, we’ve not done it for a long while and the DVD, The Early
Years, is out and we really felt we should take to that.
Frankly, we’re only
playing an hour at most, so by the time we’ve done, ‘Hallowed Be Thy
Name’, ‘Run To The Hills’ and ‘Number Of The Beast’, you know, we’re
slaying most of the set.
Then you add
‘Running Free’, ‘Phantom of The Opera’ and there is a whole bunch of
other neat stuff that you can do. So, in fact you’ve got an enormous
amount of material that you could do from the first four albums. You’ve
got plenty to do in one hour.
M.B. : Just
banging the jewels right up against each other?
B.D. : Yeah.
M.B. : The fact that Ozzfest takes you out with Black
Sabbath this time, is that anything special for you?
B.D. :
Well, I've never seen Sabbath. So it is going to be great for me!
(laughs)
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